Using "Why" to Keep Your Policies and Procedures Relevant

If you are a parent, you’ll be familiar with what I’m going to write about — encouraging people around you to ask and answer “why” questions.

I’m not talking about answering questions like “Why is the grass green? “or “Why do I have to take out the trash?” (I’ll leave you to take care of those.) And I’m definitely not attempting to answer the existential “Why are we here?” Frankly, that’s too deep, and I’m somewhat afraid of the answer.

Instead, this is about the need to ask and answer some of the “whys” of work, specifically as they relate to policies and procedures.

The Power of Why in the Workplace

I expect most of you reading this are employees of governmental entities. As such, you are (or should be) aware that your organization is governed by laws, rules, and regulations, many of which are enacted at the federal or state level. For local governance, ordinances, resolutions, policies, and procedures are adopted that are more specific to your entity.

Unfortunately, what sometimes happens, particularly with policies and procedures, is this:

• Policies and procedures become outdated. For example, does your purchasing policy still have a capital threshold of $500?
• Relevant steps are omitted. For example, does your salary waiver policy prohibit directives on the waived salary?
• Valuable procedural information is not shared with the intended employees. For example, does your new payroll person know which taxes to pay, or when and how to pay them?
• Policies and procedures simply don’t exist.

These issues seem particularly true in smaller entities, given the limited staff and high turnover, but not exclusively. Smaller entities are not the only places where, when asked a question about policies and/or procedures, the answer from staff still remains, “That’s the way we’ve always done it,” “That’s how I was shown” (which the actions of either may or may not be correct for the task), or “It’s our policy.”

I would recommend that we resolve to banish those answers — because these are really just excuses — and instead, make improvements by asking “why,” finding the answer, and fixing the problem.

I’ll use examples to show why asking “why” is important. Here are a couple related to policies:

• A new part-time employee completes paperwork that includes a request for a mid-month draw. Following submission, they are informed “per policy” that the draw is not available to part-time employees.
• Seeking reimbursement, an employee submits a stack of personal cell phone statements going back six months. The accounts payable person informs the employee that “per policy” phone statements must be submitted within 30 days to receive reimbursement.

The first answer to “why” in both scenarios is that it was “per policy.” The problem is that although there are written policies for each scenario, both were silent on why such a policy was created and what the employee should do differently the next time. There may have been legitimate reasons for the verbal responses, but we don’t know what these are.

Now we’ll look at a couple of procedural examples:

• A new payroll clerk notices only one group of employees is paying into a dental plan even though the premium is 100% employee paid. The clerk ask HR why and is told that only employees in that group are eligible to receive the benefit.
• An employee is filing copies of utility late notices in individual customer files. When asked why, the employee says it’s how they were trained to manage notices.

The problems here? In the first example the written procedures were mechanical in nature— “Enter this, click that” — with no additional detail offered. When the payroll employee asked the right question, they were given incorrect information. In this case the payroll clerk dug deeper and discovered the plan was open to all employees, not just those in the group. Although this example is not earth-shattering, that’s a pretty significant problem.

In the second case the employee was following an unwritten procedure that had been passed down, was terribly outdated, and consumed valuable employee time and considerable real estate. Upon review and discussion (i.e., What are we doing and why are we doing it?), the task was redesigned to take far less time, several file cabinets were surplused — along with hundreds of hanging folders holding hundreds of individual customer files — and precious floor space was recovered.

Think Like a Consultant

Now that we can see the importance of asking “why,” let’s jump ahead to you and your staff. Imagine that you have identified some problems and are now asking, “What’s next?” I’ll use the Ask MRSC inquiry service for that answer.

Have you ever submitted an inquiry to MRSC? Some common questions we get are “Can my agency spend real estate excise tax (REET) money on….” or “Can my agency provide benefits to our elected officials?”

If so, the response you received was not simply Yes, No, Maybe, or It depends. Rather, MRSC consultants did extensive research to provide an explanation as to why they arrived at their conclusion and provided you with supporting documentation. They cited and linked to WACs and RCWs, pointed to information on websites, provided sample documents, and they might have even referenced your agency’s policies, procedures, or codes.

My recommendation, then, is to be like an MRSC consultant. You’ve asked the questions and identified some problems with your policies and/or procedures (lack of, outdated, incomplete). Now you can do the research.

If you’re writing procedures that are guided by RCWs (public records management, for example) or local agency rules (payroll, paid time off) consider including links in your procedures to aid the employee whose job involves following such procedures. If, as in the first and third examples, your policy is going to exclude/include a group of employees, be sure to explain why.

Once the completed draft of your policy or procedure has been reviewed by all who need to, including your entity’s attorney, take it to your legislative body for adoption, if required.

Finally, at least once a year you should make time in your schedule to review your agency's policies and procedures and update them if needed. And remember, adopting a policy or procedure is just a start: You need to share it with the organization and put steps in place to make sure everyone follows it.